6 powerful women at Davos you may not know — but should

It’s no secret that Davos has a gender diversity problem. Of the some 2,500 participants in the World Economic Forum’s elite gathering this year, just 17 percent are women. Although organizers tried to increase the numbers by instituting a quota system for large companies — they must bring one woman for every four men — the amount of women only increased by 2 percent since last year.

So who are these select women in attendance? Some, such as Chancellor of GermanyAngela Merkel and Yahoo YHOO CEO Marissa Mayer, are household names, but we combed the participant list and found so many influential women who are less well known. You may not have heard of the six women listed below, but trust us: you will be impressed by their accomplishments.

Davos CEOs seek to boost the image of business

One of the recurring memes of the World Economic Forum in Davos – and one constant source of fodder for Davos cynics – is discussion of the “social responsibility of business.”

A decade ago, I wandered into a session entitled “Does Business Have a Noble Purpose?” searching for Carly Fiorina, who at the time was CEO of Hewlett Packard HPQ, embroiled in an embarrassingly public fight with her board, and listed as a participant on the panel.

Fiorina didn’t show. But some version of that panel has been repeated countless times at Davos in the intervening years. Prominent business thinkers from Bill Gates to Michael Porter to Marc Benioff have used the Swiss retreat to propound their ideas for “Creative Capitalism,” “Shared Value” capitalism, and “Compassionate Capitalism.”

Perhaps my judgment is affected by the mountain air, but I detect something qualitatively different in discussions with CEOs on the familiar topic this year. Concerns over inequality, the persistent depression in public trust of business, and the equally persistent demands of a new generation of young people who want to work for companies that “do good” as well as “do well,” have given this old Davos meme a new life.

Aetna AET CEO Marc Bertolini is a data point. He recently announced plans to give his lowest- paid workers an increase in pay and benefits of as much as 30%, at an annual cost of $25 million to the company.

Bertolini told me he participates in discussions about “higher ambition leadership” with management guru Michael Beer at Harvard. “We are looking for ways to reestablish the credibility of corporate leadership in the eyes of the public,” he said. After doing a deep dive into Aetna’s employee data, he found that he was employing a large number of single mothers earning $13-$14 an hour, some of whom were relying on Medicaid and food stamps to make ends meet.

Bertolini justifies the sudden pay raise not on social grounds, but rather with the rationale Henry Ford used a century ago to justify above-market pay – that it enables the company to decrease worker turnover and improve productivity. He says it will not affect the price of Aetna’s insurance, nor the results he reports to Wall Street.

Critics on the right will pull out a favorite Milton Friedman quote saying the “social responsibility of business” is to make money for shareholders. Critics on the left will note that even $16 an hour – the new Aetna minimum – is paltry compared to Bertolini’s $30 million pay package, and impossible to raise a family on.

Still, a renewed effort to walk the walk as well as talk the talk appears to be gaining ground among CEOs, and can only be welcomed.

University of Pennyslvania President Amy Gutmann says she also senses a change. More importantly, she says, doing well by your employees and creating value for your customers has always been a better route to business success than an excessive focus on shareholder value. “Every successful CEO I know puts service to their customers first and shareholders second,” she says. “Business has a social contract with society – to serve the consumers of its products.” To do that successfully, they have to make a profit. But service to consumers comes first.”

Actions like Bertolini’s won’t change the forces leading to increased inequality, and are unlikely to alter mass opinion. But recognition that corporate leaders need to make a greater effort to shore up the public case for capitalism is a step in the right direction. Capitalism is the best system known to man for creating prosperity — the stunning rise of China in the last two decades should have ended that argument. But capitalism without widespread public support is bound for trouble.

Lloyd’s CEO: Cyber attacks cost companies $400 billion every year

Lloyd’s, the British insurance company, is known for specializing in obscure risks. When civilians finally push off into space, they will likely be insured, along with the aircraft they travel in, by Lloyd’s.

But one initially rare insurance product has become far more common: hack coverage. Inga Beale, the CEO of Lloyd’s, which manages a clearinghouse for insurance policies, said that demand for cyber insurance has grown considerably in recent years. Last year, the insurance industry took in $2.5 billion in premiums on policies to protect companies from losses resulting from hacks. That was up from around $2 billion a year before, and less than $1 billion two years before that.

Cyber-security has been a hot topic at this year’s World Economic Forum, the global gathering of CEOs, world leaders, and other power players in Davos, Switzerland. On Wednesday, Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers predicted that 2015 would be an even worse year for cyber attacks.

Beale said that Lloyd’s estimates that cyber attacks cost businesses as much as $400 billion a year, including the damage itself and subsequent disruption to the normal course of business. Beale, who became the CEO of Lloyd’s a year ago, said that she did not know just how much coverage companies have purchased, but she thinks it’s a fraction of what companies are losing on account of hacks. And it’s usually the firms that are best prepared for cyber attacks that wind up buying insurance. What’s more, about 90% of cyber insurance is being purchased by U.S. firms, leaving other companies around the world exposed.

“The U.S. companies are ahead of the curve,” said Beale. “Insurance used to be about concrete, protecting the loss of physical things. Now you have to get companies to insure against more intangible things.”

Beale said that, right now, the maximum cyber insurance coverage any single company can purchase from Lloyd’s is $300 million. She said that about 10% of all cyber insurance is underwritten on the Lloyd’s platform.

“Every time there is an attack, demand for policies goes up,” said Beale.

The youngest person at Davos is bullish … on Russia

Even among the many powerful people in Davos, Switzerland this week, Roman Chukov, at 22, is particularly unique. He is the youngest invitee to this year’s World Economic Forum, the global confab that draws business leaders, billionaires, and politicians to the Swiss Alps each year.

You might expect the youngest person at Davos to be a technology whiz kid. And Chukov may be one, but that’s not his job. He is in economic development.

Chukov’s business title in the Davos directory is awesome, especially for a 22-year-old. He is listed as the head expert of the Moscow City Investment Agency. But Chukov says he prefers his additional title, which is development director of the Russian Trade & Economic Development Council. His job is to help draw international investors and companies to Russia, which is quite the challenging task right now. Falling oil prices look to be crippling Russia’s economy. And the conflict in Ukraine has made investor nervous about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s leadership. Chukov also helps promote business in Russia. Here’s his pitch and a bit on his experience in Davos this year.

Fortune: There are some who feel that this year’s World Economic Conference seems even more out of touch than usual. Do you get that sense?

Roman Chukov: No. There are a lot of interesting discussions that seem right to me. No one thinks the condition of the economy is a utopia right now. The general sense is that the BRICS [the acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa] will continue to play an important role. Without the BRIC countries, the world economy cannot grow at 2%. That sounds correct to me.

The value of the ruble and the Russian stock market have plunged. Is Russia a good place to invest right now?

There’s been an outflow of speculative capital. But the long-term investors have stayed, because Russia is a huge opportunity for investors. There are some people who are afraid to invest in Russia right now. But the people who are not afraid, they will be at the top. Those who are afraid will be the losers. If I was an investor with $1 billion, I would put it in Russia.

But won’t low oil prices continue to be a problem for Russia?

It’s not low oil prices that are a problem. It’s volatility that is a problem. We can survive $70 oil or even $50 a barrel oil. What’s hard to survive is the wide price swings.

So you think 2015 will be better for Russia?

It’s been a year of turbulence. But Russia is already in the process of diversifying its economy. We are looking more seriously at what we can do. We can extract oil and make weapons but we want to be better at pharmaceuticals, making planes, and agriculture. Russia can produce everything. We have vegetables. We have all different kinds of meats.

That seems like an obvious thing to do. Why hasn’t Russia diversified away from oil before?

Innovation is happening everywhere in Russia, it’s a lot to change. People are now aware of that and that’s great. People can no longer sit on their oil pipe. Now everyone realizes it’s time for action.

But do outside international investors get that?

What is really important to know about Russia is that what we have is a huge source of human capital, and it’s an innovative workforce. There are lots of think tanks and academic research. Russia invented the radio and sent the first person into space. Also, what Putin has said is that the rules for business are not going to change. And we will have enterprise zones and territories of special development to attract outside investors, as well as tax holidays to attract industries that we think are socially important.

Russia has everything an investor needs to be successful in the business sphere. People who want to invest in Russia will not regret it.

Alibaba CEO Jack Ma says slower growth is good for China

That’s what Jack Ma, the CEO of Alibaba, told a crowd of business leaders and other attendants at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Friday. He also offered some business advice.

Ma said that he thinks slightly slower growth for China will be a whole lot better, than if the country’s leaders tried to continue to grow the economy at 9%.

“We are already the second largest economy in the world,” said Ma. “We are not going to be able to continue to grow that fast.”

It was Ma’s first time speaking at Davos, after staying away from the global confab, which once ranked him as a global leader, for six years. Ma said he had skipped Davos because he didn’t think talk was going to change the world. But he said he was back to share what he and his company had learned. The corridor outside the 90-seat conference room Ma was scheduled to speak in was jammed for a half hour before Ma arrived. Many who wanted to hear Ma speak were turned away.

Ma said China’s challenge was to stay interested in quality, not quantity. “Grow your value and grow your vision. That’s what China needs to do,” said Ma. “I don’t worry about the Chinese economy.”

Earlier in the week, at the conference, the China’s Premier Li Keqiang said that his country’s economy was slowing, but would not have a “hard landing.”

Ma said Alibaba has very little relationship with the Chinese government. He said he has never taken money from the government (though he wanted to when Alibaba was getting started), or from Chinese banks. Ma said that the government sometimes comes to Alibaba to take on projects, but he says he mostly declines. Alibaba has taken on a government project to make it easier for people who have moved to cities from farms to buy train tickets to get home for holidays.

Ma said his vision for Alibaba is to make it like a “World Trade Organization for small businesses,” bringing down barriers to sell goods in other countries. He said the company has a good business in Russia and has taken delivery times down from four months when Alibaba started there to one week. Ma said Alibaba can do that around the world, helping small businesses connect with consumers in developing nations.

On succeeding in business in general, Ma said his best advice is to “calm down.” Other droplets of wisdom included ‘there is always a way out’, and ‘rejection comes before success’. Ma also said it’s good to realize business is not a zero-sum game. It might even be worse than that. “Business is not about I win, you lose,” said Ma. “Even if your company dies, I don’t win.”

And, like in the past, Ma said one of his biggest role models in business is the fictional Forest Gump. “People think he’s stupid, but he keeps coming back,” said Ma. No word on whether Ma will come back to Davos next year.

Learn more of the latest news about Alibaba from Fortune’s video team:

Gay rights takes center stage at Davos

In 2011, when Beth Brooke-Marciniak came out to her coworkers at Ernst & Young, she says she initially became withdrawn at work. After years of hiding her private life in the office, the global vice chair at EY said she struggled to figure out how to be gay and a business leader at the same time.

What a difference four years can make. This Saturday, for the first time in the history of the World Economic Forum’s annual conference in Davos, Switzerland, gay rights in the workplace is on the official agenda. And Brooke-Marciniak — who has written about being a gay executive for Fortune — is one of speakers on the panel on diversity and gay rights.

In the discussion entitled “The Diversity Dividend,” Brooke-Marciniak and other global diversity experts like Anne-Marie Slaughter, the president and CEO of New America Foundation, are slated to discuss ways to ensure that employers help the LGBT community and other minorities feel valued and respected in the workplace.

Past Davos meetings have included small discussions about gay rights have been organized, including a much talked about breakfast last year organized by Paul Singer, the founder of hedge fund Elliott Management, and Daniel Loeb, the founder of Third Point. But organizers declined to put the LGBT rights on the formal agenda – until this year. And interviews with a few other prominent and openly gay executives attending Davos suggests it has had an energizing effect on them. “The fact that the word LGBT is [now] in the official Davos program is not insignificant,” Sander van ‘t Noordende, who is openly gay and the Group CEO of Products at Accenture, told Fortune. “It is time to elevate the subject and get some more visibility to LGBT issues in the workplace and there is no better place to do that than Davos.”

On Thursday, Noordende, alongside Brooke-Marciniak and Antonio Simoes, the openly gay CEO for the United Kingdom at HSBC Bank, participated in an unofficial panel discussion (organized by Accenture) about how leaders can improve the lives of the LGBT workforce. At Davos, there is a robust informal agenda of discussions like this one that conference participants are aware of, but are not on the official program.

Last year, the Financial Times ranked Simoes and Brooke-Marciniak No. 2 and 3, respectively, on its list of the highest-ranking “out” senior executives in the world. Both leaders said they felt compelled to use that status at Davos by making the business case for championing diversity before an audience of world leaders.

The executives centered their Thursday discussion on the importance of being a “proactive” ally and how it can lower turnover. If you have a senior executive within your organization that is openly gay, employees lower down the pipeline are 85% more likely to come out of the closet, said Brooke-Marciniak, citing previous studies on the topic. What’s more striking is that research shows workers who are closeted are 70% more likely to leave their employer and look for a job where they feel more comfortable, Brooke-Marciniak said.

While many people working for Fortune 500 companies may profess support for gay rights, Brooke-Marciniak argues that becoming a true ally for gay workers requires a far deeper level of inclusion.

“Some people are more than willing to put the rainbow mug on their desk,” she said in an interview ahead of the panel. “But if someone says something in a meeting [that is anti-gay], are they willing to speak up and be proactive and take action? That’s what is needed to make the environment safe for the people around them.”

Both Brooke-Marciniak and Noordende acknowledged that Apple CEO Tim Cook announcing that he was gay last year had a powerful effect, encouraging more conversation about LGBT-workplace issues. Yet Simoes contended that it is almost more important for leaders who succeeded in business while out of the closet to share their stories as well. There are very few leaders who are out of the closet in business, said Simoes, making it critical for leaders like himself to be “visible.”

“We need leaders who are inclusive at all levels of the organization,” said Brooke-Marciniak. “More senior execs coming out in business are waking up to the fact that this is an important piece of difference that we need to highlight.”

Speaking specifically of gay rights progress in the United States, Brooke-Marciniak said she is encouraged at the rate of change she is seeing both inside and outside of the office. The EY global vice chair cited political efforts furthering the legalization of gay marriage and private sector efforts to make the workplace more inclusive.

How this gay rights discussion will be received Saturday remains to be seen. Many dignitaries who come to Davos come from countries like Russia and Uganda, which are hostile to gay rights. Brooke-Marciniak told Fortune that she hopes that by bringing the issue of LGBT workplace rights to the main stage at Davos on Saturday, fewer members of the community will feel as apprehensive as she did when she mustered the courage to come out at work. Now, she says she is a much more effective leader because she doesn’t have to check her private life at the office door.

“Every organization wants to get the best out of their people. You can only get the best if your people if they feel comfortable in their skin at work and if the environment at work is an inclusive one,” said Noordende.

Meet the asteroid mining executive of Davos: No joke

In Davos, you meet a lot of people who do interesting and unusual things. After all, those who are part of the global elite dream big.

On a shuttle, I sat across from someone who was fighting corruption in Angola and elsewhere. Next to me was the photographer Platon (he goes by one name), who chased Edward Snowden for a year before photographing him hugging a flag for Wired. He now has a non-profit that plans to raise awareness about human rights issues through portraiture.

But Chris Lewicki has by far the most out there (literally) job of anyone I have ever met at the World Economic Forum. He is an asteroid miner, or at least he wants to be one. He is the president and chief engineer of Planetary Resources, a company that soon hopes to launch rockets into space that will hook up with asteroids and start digging. Trapped in the rocks of asteriods, Lewicki says, is water. His company plans to melt the rocks they get from the asteroids to draw the water. Some of the water could be converted into rocket fuel by splitting off the hydrogen. His goal is to create roaming gas stations in outer space. The gas stations will also sell asteroid water. (Full disclosure: I am simplifying here. I met Lewicki at a wine-filled Davos party.)

This, of course, might sound a little far-fetched. Lewicki says Planetary is still a few years away from launching its firm’s mining rocket into space. The company hopes to extract just a single vial of water in its first mission. But if it can be done at all, Lewicki would be the one who’d know. According to his bio on Planetary Resource’s website, he was the flight director for NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity rovers that landed on Mars. He also has an asteroid named in his honor.

What’s more, the company—which was co-founded by Peter Diamandis, a space entrepreneur who made Fortune’s list of the World’s Greatest Leaders last year—has attracted some influential and high-profile funders. It has received investments from both Larry Page and Eric Schmidt of Google GOOG. And other investors include Virgin Group’s Richard Branson, Ross Perot, Jr., and billionaire venture capitalist Ram Shriram. Lewicki says the company has also received some funds from traditional mining companies.

Lewicki didn’t say how much money his company has raised or what his company could be worth. (Or if he did, I don’t remember. We were at a wine bar.) He also didn’t say how much it would cost to mine water in space, but he did say it would be cheaper than shipping water or rocket fuel to outer space.

After I asked a few more questions about his company—like “is there really a lot of demand right now for gas stations and bottle water in outer space?”—Lewiski told me to stop being a critic. Every industry, he said, has to start somewhere. Yes. Dream big. This is Davos, after all.

What are top business execs saying from Davos?

The world’s top political and business leaders have flocked to Davos, Switzerland this week for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting. The event, focused on “the new global context,” is equal parts tech seminar, schmooze-fest, elite cocktail party.

Like with most conferences, participants have been tweeting away about all they’re seen and learned. Here’s a taste:

From Hikmet Ersek, Western Union CEO:

More than 40% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or children of immigrants #WEF15

Why Davos feels even more out of touch this year

The World Economic Forum in Davos has been derided before as an out of touch orgy of billionaires held in the Swiss Alps. But somehow, impossibly, this year a number of people seem to think the gathering is more divorced from reality than usual.

Is it just me or does Davos feel even less relevant than usual this year?

The conference may not actually be any more out of touch than usual. Indeed, there are panel discussions on Ebola, lots of talk about the need for cyber-security, and the screening of a movie about the plight of women in Saudi Arabia. Still, at least some of the whispers in the espresso-filled lounge of Davos’ Congress Centre, the forum’s main venue, are focused on why the global gabfest is less relevant than it has been in the past. The billionaires are only part of the problem.

Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei opens up in Davos

Ren Zhengfei, Huawei’s secretive founder and CEO, just became slightly less secretive. On Thursday the Chinese businessman sat down for a rare public interview at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Zhengfei, a controversial figure who got his start as a People’s Liberation Army officer and went on to found China-based telecom giant Huawei, has rarely granted media interviews, let alone appearances that are broadcast online. (Zhengfei even took a few seemingly unscripted questions from the audience.)

Here, in no particular order, are seven takeaways from his conversation with BBC correspondent Linda Yueh:

1.) Zhengfei comes from humble origins. “We had salt to cook with so we were considered wealthy,” he told his interviewer. (His company, Huawei, is expected to have raked in a whopping $46 billion last year—that’s a whole lot of salt.)

2.) The aging entrepreneur says he joined the Chinese army “by chance.” According to Zhengfei, fabric was rationed at the time (the 1970s), which led the government to build a factory that makes synthetic fabric. Because the factory was located in the middle of nowhere, very few workers were willing to go build it. So the government then called in the military, which in turn corralled anyone with a university education to come help. “That was how I entered the military,” said Zhengfei, a former civil engineering student. “I think that was a good thing to do.”

3.) Zhengfei has nothing but love for the United States. That’s a little hard to believe given that the U.S. government has largely kept Huawei out of the American market, at least when it comes to telecom-networking equipment. (The company also sells mobile phones and other electronics.) But Zhengfei even went as far as to say he has never thought that the United States isn’t fair to Huawei. “The most important thing in the U.S. is openness,” said Zhengfei. “As for our position today, we don’t just look at the people around us as competitors, but rather as friends.” To help illustrate his point, the CEO used an interesting analogy: “We always say, we divide the watermelon in eight pieces and we only want one piece.”

4.) When asked if his company has ever been asked to use its networking equipment to eavesdrop on communications in China or elsewhere, Zhengfei insisted that has never happened. “There’s no way we can possibly penetrate into other people’s systems and we have never received such a request from the Chinese government,” he said. Some U.S. officials would probably beg to differ, though that hasn’t stopped Huawei’s growth in most non-U.S. markets.

5.) One of the secrets to Huawei’s success, according to Zhengfei, is its extremely focused dedication to serving its customers, come hell or high water—literally. Case in point: Huawei operates in 170 countries and has never ceased services even when its own employees are faced with danger. Some examples given by Zhengfei include a tsunami, a civil war, and an earthquake.

6.) The biggest threat to Huawei’s future isn’t war or natural disasters or competitors or even the U.S. government. “The biggest enemy is not others—it’s ourselves,” said Zhengfei. The billionaire CEO (and largest shareholder of the company) says he fears Huawei will grow too fast and make too much money. “We are a small grass but we try to grow from a small grass to a small tree,” said Zhengfei. (Who knew he was such a poet?)

7.) Lastly, Zhengfei maintains that he is neither secretive nor mysterious. At least, not by intention. “I am not mysterious at all,” Zhengfei told the audience. “I know nothing about technology, and I know nothing about finance. If you don’t know much you better not show up, otherwise people might see the back of your pants are very dirty. I do not maintain this low profile on purpose.”